I finally got my second vaccination Friday so in ten days, I’ll be ready to start resuming a normal life and I am looking forward to it. Since it became apparent how serious the pandemic was, I have left the house only for necessary errands and to play golf. The latter makes it easy to social distance. The necesssary errands have mostly been trips to the grocery store. A couple trips to the doctor and the vet. Once in a while I’ve made a side trip to another retail establishment such as the LHS. I’ve done a lot of e-tail shopping the last year through Amazon, Walmart, and ebay. I’ve discovered how easy it is and how quickly I can usually get what I want. I will probably continue to do a lot of shopping online. I look forward to being able to go to a bar or sit down restaurant again.
Hopefully the rest of the country will slowly get back to normal too. Maybe this summer we will see in person train shows and the tourist railroads resuming their activities. I wonder if the pandemic has put any of the tourist railroads out of business. I looked on the UP steam schedule and they haven’t announced anything for 2021. Looks like it might be 2022 before that starts up again. Would like to see Big Boy again.
Where are you located? I live in Delaware and bars and restaurants have occupancy limits but most are open. I’ve been enjoying both since the middle of last year, when they started opening up again.
I have not had any shots, mostly because these things have been rushed through through and bypassed most normal vaccine testing. I have lost any faith I ever had in Big Pharma and govermment.
Not to be the downer, but other countries have a much higher percentage vaccinated than here, and are again under lockdown. They keep having new outbreaks. Vaccines or not.
As much as I dislike it, I am afraid we may have a “new normal” and until everyone gets onboard with masks, social distancing, etc…, this isn’t going to go away.
And until the vaccines have better information from the current’tests’, I will be cautious about getting in line for one.
The safest answer, is masks, social distancing, limiting the number of people in any given location, not doing unnecessary travel, and avoiding crowds. Even with vaccines, CDC and WHO are both still recommending masks and limiting crowds.
Our bars and restaurants have been open for quite a while too. I just haven’t been willing to risk going to one. Even with social distancing, it has been too much of a risk. I check all the high risk boxes. Male. Over 60. Overweight. Diabetic. I’m going to give the vaccine a couple more weeks to take full effect and then I’ll be willing to start venturing out into public more than what I have been doing.
I’ve had these discussions in other online groups. Many are of the opinion that masks keep you from spreading the disease but not getting it. The people who make all these recommendations keep changing their mind so how is anybody to know for sure. I wear a mask because I figure it can’t hurt and might help. Even after being vaccinated, I’ll continue to wear one until this thing has subsided to the point it’s no longer a signficant risk. Who knows when that will be.
They say the vaccine is 95% effective. I don’t know how they could know that. I think they just picked a number in case somebody who gets vaccinated gets the disease. They’ll say that person was in the 5%. The real test of the vaccine will be when we start getting numbers on how many people who got vaccinated got the disease anyway. Hopefully that will be extremely low but who knows. I know I feel a lot safer knowing I have been vaccinated than when I had not.
Its like the flu, every year, month, week there can and will be mutations and new strains. So live ones live, enjoy whats open and so forth and do it as safely as you can. There will be the first model train show locally since everything got put on hold last year this coming weekend. I will be going, hopefully finding some new projects and so forth. I will linger less and not hang out for hours visiting dealers and old friends as much. Maybe do that track side outdoors if the weather is nice. Pretty good traffic on the NS thru Peru, Indiana on the old Wabash main line. We cannot live in fear forever, lots of stuff can kill us or make us sick. Time to enjoy life a bit more now, as safely as possible and within reason. Mike the Aspie
Don’t know where you are located John, here in Maryland we seem to be only having “issues” in and around the two big cities - Baltimore and Washington DC - more so in the DC metro area.
Infection rates are low and in steady decline in the outer burbs and rural areas. We live out with the dairy cows and corn fields…
And, everyone around here is pretty compliant with masks and distancing.
The nearby Strasburg Railroad has been reopened since this past summer, don’t remember exactly when they opened back up. Yes they are limiting numbers, and have lots of rules, but we took the grand kids and felt very comfortable with the safety issues - I’m 63, my wife is 65 and high risk with several health issues. She gets her second shot in two weeks.
We still go out to eat, not as often, but we had breakfast at our favorite spot this morning.
I think everybody has to judge what is happening were they are and make their own choices.
It’s encouraging that infection rates are in decline and hopefully that trend will continue. However percentages aren’t what matters to each individual if they get infected. Your personal infection rate is either going to be 0% or 100%. Even though I’m vaccinated, I’m not going to let my guard down. I will be more inclined to venture out and be among people but I’m not going to pretend this thing has gone away because it hasn’t. Fortunately for me two of my hobbies, golf and model railroading, have only been minimally impacted. On the downside, my bowling group has shutdown because our bowling alley has gone to restricted hours which doesn’t include the morning hours when we used to bowl. This season looks like it’s a wipeout. Hopefully we’ll start up next fall and be back on our regular schedule.
Eventually the Spanish flu disappeared so hopefull
The East Troy Electric RR. is running as usual, but, advanced reservations are encouraged, so they can keep control on the size of the crowd within their station, and on the trains.
It’s been normal in Asia for many decades to wear a mask when you have (or are just getting over) a cold or flu so you don’t make someone else sick. It’s considered a common courtesy to other folks. It would be nice if that became the norm here.
I was searching for stats in the US regarding infection rates for people who had gotten both vaccinations. All I could find was the stats for Israel. I think they had 423,000 people who had gotten both shots and of those 68 had become infected. Of course that doesn’t mean more won’t get infected but so far that seems like a pretty low number. That’s just 1 in every 6220 people which seems very encouraging to me regarding the efficacy of the vaccines.
Everyone has to decide for themselves whether to get vaccinated or not but it seems pretty clear to me you are much less likely to get infected if you get vaccinated. We have a pretty good sample size and the numbers of people who have had bad reactions has been quite low. Once I’ve given the vaccine the recommended 10-14 days to take full effect, I’m going to feel much safer venturing out in public and doing things like going to bars, restaurants, and places where crowds gather. There are some tourist railroads I would like to visit and I would now feel safe in such an environment where I didn’t before. I would also be willing to attend a sporting event, even one with full capacity. I’d wear a mask just as an added precaution, but I think the risk is now low enough I would be willing to take it.
Their cities are extremely polluted over there because there’s no guidelines. For them, no clean health air to breathe even India has developed this problem too.
SoCal Railway Museum (Perris) held their swap meet a couple of weeks ago. I was going to go because I’m dying to get to a train show then realized… that’s nuts. A friend went and there were a couple of maskless folks, so I’m glad I stayed away. (Happily it’s been two weeks and my friend is in the clear.) My attitude is: Why take a chance. And even once I get the 2nd shot (next week!!), I believe I could still be a carrier.
At my club we’ve been closed to visitors but are considering re-opening to non- and new members. We’re looking forward to doing our first open house in the fall. We figure (and hope) most people who want to be vaccinated will probably have it by June or July, but we’re waiting for fall because our air conditioners aren’t up to the task.
Once the summer comes and everyone who wants a vaccine has it, I’ll worry less about spreading. I figure if people don’t want to protect themselves, that’s on them. Meantime, I’ll wait. Can’t imagine anything worse than getting someone sick. I know a few people who had Covid and it was really rough.
I travel a lot for work and used to think the people who wore masks on planes were being overly cautious. I also used to get 2-4 serious colds a year. Since I’ve been home and not traveling, I’ve had 0 colds! I think when/if I get back to flying, I’ll seriously consider masking, pandemic or not.
There are different issues with museum lines and tarins shows. A museum, with or without an assoicated RR, can make physical mods and other changes and then serve the public on a fairly well-assessed basis, with a regular schedule.
A train show tends to happen only every once in awhile, imposes a lot more uncertainty, and brings a much wider group of people from a wider series of places than a museum. A show also takes months of planning and the confidence of everyone involved, both substantial problems right now.
For shows, the problem isn’t so much meeting current regs, it’s predicting what regs will be in effect a year from now, or maybe a little less. Property opwners aren’t exactly wanting to commit to dates in the face of such unknowns.
I read an article that said seasonal flu numbers for the past year are at historic lows due to precautions taken for Covid-19. It might make a lot of sense to continue these precautions even if and when Covid-19 is in our rearview mirror. Maybe not social distancing but mask wearing and hand sanitizing could reduce the spread of colds and flu.
